With this re-publication of Lionel Trilling's finest essays, Leon Wieseltier offers readers of many generations a rich overview of Trilling's achievement. The exhilarating essays collected here include justly celebrated masterpieces — on Mansfield Park and on "Why We Read Jane Austen"; on Twain, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Isaac Babel; on Keats, Wordsworth, Eliot, Frost; on "Art and Neurosis"; and the famous Preface to Trilling's book The Liberal Imagination.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 557-559) and index.

The America of John Dos Passos — Hemingway and his critics — T.S. Eliot's politics — The immortality of ode — Kipling — Reality in America — Art and neurosis — Manners, morals, and the novel — The Kinsey report — Huckleberry Finn — The Princess Casamassima — Wordsworth and the Rabbis — William Dean Howells and the roots of modern taste — The poet as hero: Keats in his letters — George Orwell and the politics of truth — The situation of the American intellectual at the present time — Mansfield Park — Isaac Babel — The morality of inertia — "That smile of Parmenides made me think" — The last lover — A speech on Robert Frost: a cultural episode — On the teaching of modern literature — The Leavis-Snow controversy — The fate of pleasure — James Joyce in his letters — Mind in the modern world — Art, will, and necessity — Why we read Jane Austen.